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I swear I wasn't looking for trouble. I was relaxing at the bar as a civilian, tonic water in one hand, itsy-bitsy iPad in the other, off duty (or so I intended) from my work as a hospitality and customer service consultant.

This was at one of America's most famous hotels--it's a landmark property on the national historic register, and by all accounts is thriving. On the hotel's campus is a restaurant, and in that restaurant I sat at the above-mentioned bar. (The restaurant is less renowned than the hotel, for reasons that will become apparent.)

A dinner guest walked in. The hostess asked his name.

The guest got to his table. The busser bringing the waters also asked the guest his name.

Then his waitress arrived, and quickly became the third employee to ask the guest his name, in the course of maybe seven minutes.

As the waitress passed the bar on her way back from the table, I decided that, off-duty or not, I had to try to find out what the devil was going on.

"Waitress [actually, I used her name], why did you ask your guest what his name is? Why did the water boy ask as well? After the hostess had done the same?"

The waitress's candid answer:

"The hotel hired a consultant who's created some new survey they've started sending out. And one of the questions we are most heavily rated on-- people have actually been fired over this!--is "did your server use your name?" So we all figure, we'll make sure we hear your name just before we have to use it. We don't want to be the next one fired."

*****

The idea that "you get what you measure" has truth to it, but only partial truth. Measurement will only drive behavior in the direction you want it driven if your employees understand why you're measuring, and what you're actually trying to drive.

That the goal of the exercise is to provide true hospitality.

Not a simulation.

*****

Now, customer service, hospitality, foodservice, retail, and B2B all need standards: suggested, even expected, behaviors on the part of their employees. But there is a way to drive these without losing the value of employee autonomy, the value of unlocking the desire of employees to act in a way that suits your overall goals (and your smaller goals as well) as a company.

Standards can help ensure that every part of your service reflects the best way your company knows to perform it.

And there is a methodology for designing a standard in a way that, while prescriptive, allows you employees the autonomy to adapt their behaviors to suit the needs and wishes, expressed or unexpressed, of the customer they're actually facing at the moment.

The summary statement for a standard should briefly include these three points:

1. Why the service is of value (why we’re doing this in the first place)

2. The emotional response we’re aiming to have the customer to feel

3. The expected way to accomplish the service

The third point, the expected behavior, is #3 for a reason. Because "why the service is of " and "the emotional response we're aiming for" are what matter her.

This may sound fuzzy, and I guess it is, in the sense that humans--guests--are infinitely variable. But they're who pay our paychecks.